He should be toast in a GOP primary, in other words … and yet he’s not. In fact Graham may win the GOP nomination outright on June 10 after failing to draw a “big name” challenger in his most vulnerable of primary seasons.

You just gotta love “Republican” voters in the “reddest state in America,” right?

Anyway, multiple sources familiar with various internal campaign tracking polls tell us Graham is at or above the 50 percent threshold he must hit on June 10 in order to avoid a runoff election. Should Graham fail to hit 50 percent, he would square off against his top-performing GOP challenger on June 24.

That’s potentially a “danger zone” for Graham – but his massive cash advantage and the condensed two-week time frame of a runoff election both work in his favor (making it difficult for a prospective opponent to raise additional money and mobilize campaign resources). This website has argued in favor of extending the runoff period, but that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon – and it obviously isn’t going to happen during this election cycle.

In other words even if Graham draws an electable Republican in a runoff election (and as far as we can tell Charleston businesswoman Nancy Mace is the only Graham challenger fitting that description), he would still be an overwhelming favorite to win the nomination.

Crazy, isn’t it?

South Carolina “Republicans” – who love to brag about their conservative bona fides – appear to be mere weeks away from nominating the single most liberal “Republican” in the U.S. Congress to another six-year term in the U.S. Senate.

In addition to Mace – who says she’s in second place in the race – Graham is facing Columbia, S.C. pastor Det Bowers, S.C. Sen. Lee Bright (R-Spartanburg), Upstate businessman Richard Cash and Afghan War veteran Bill Connor in the June 10 primary.